
One thing that preoccupies a lot of students is travel. Whether for spring break, visiting family over the holidays (which hopefully they pay for, right?), or just a quick get-away with friends, everyone needs a break from those long, torturous hours of study. Or maybe that’s just me. I need more breaks that include travel than the number I currently take (which is a whopping zero).
Most of us already know about Greyhound, Amtrak, Travelocity, Kayak, Hotwire and the like. But there’re a few other sites out there that warrant mention. For those who are comfortable with taking the bus, there’s Megabus. This only services a few areas of the country (and Canada), but their rates are cheap and the transportation is reliable (from what I hear; it’s not actually available where I live). For cheaper flights, consider sites like Travelzoo and StudentUniverse. Both of these sites seek out lower rates for students, including some amazing deals on international travel.
Of course, there’s always the beloved student road trip. It never hurts to see if someone you know wants to vacation with you, reducing fuel costs. To get a good estimate of how much money you’ll actually spend (and whether it’s a better deal to drive or fly) on gas, check out Trip Gas Price. They keep track of regional average fuel costs and allow you to enter a starting city and a destination city, plus the type of vehicle you drive. Then it’ll calculate not only the estimated distance, but the estimated fuel cost for the entire trip. Currently the site only uses major cities instead of accounting for rural localities, but it still provides a good gauge of how much you’ll spend for fuel on any given trip.
For the destination itself, most of the people I know seem to focus on large cities with lots of tourist activities. Personally, I shy away from these sorts of vacations because they’re so very expensive. Despite my love of cities like New York and San Francisco, hotels are expensive (even hostels are costly in some of these cities), the cost of getting there is high and activities themselves seem to require the donation of at least one extremity. Instead, I try to focus on smaller destinations, or sometimes I forgo a specific destination all together.
A fun vacation activity for a road trip is to make a list of odd historical sites within a couple states of where you live. You can easily visit them all on a road trip. Bring along a tent and a couple sleeping bags and you can also camp in lieu of hitting up hotels. For example, from Houston I could spend a couple weeks touring Old West sites of note and Civil War landmarks. The tip of Texas conducted the Civil War after it’d ended because it took so long for them to get the message the war was over (there’s also a state park there that allows camping for roughly $10/car). Tombstone isn’t too far away and is packed with a shockingly large number of things to do for such a small town (the Rose Museum, horse-drawn carriage tours of the history, live shows reenacting the fight of the OK Corral, natural landmarks and stunning deserts to poke around). There’s also the painted desert and lots of national and state forests to explore, not to mention road-side museums with a plethora of bizarre sites (entry fees never top $5). Heading north to Nebraska is the Boothill Cemetery, the home of Kool-Aid (okay, come on – who doesn’t want to see that?), incredible Native American landmarks, the Pioneer Trail and all sorts of other things. In the Dakotas and in California you can pan for gold and really see things about how people lived “way back when.” There’s so much all over the country to visit, I couldn’t begin to list it all. This nation has a fascinating history that’s waiting to be explored. All you need is a car and a few bucks in your pocket to pay for camp sites. Talk to locals and they’ll tell you about other oddities in their area you’d never know about otherwise (in this way, I learned about the strange case of David the Czech in Oklahoma, who had a drawn out court ordeal with some local Germans he accused of poisoning his cattle. His yard is now full of billboards he and his family have made detailing their outrage). Bring along a cooler and a camping stove (you can get one of these at a restaurant supply store for about $50; fuel canisters cost about $1.50 for about 4 hours of cook time), and you’re not relegated to fast food and diner cuisine, either. Whether alone or with friends, I always come back from these trips enriched and refreshed.
The biggest problem with student travel I see is that most of us focus more on the crazy times, such as Ft. Lauderdale or San Padre Island. If we expand our view to encompass less traveled roads, we can have an equally good time, learn something new, have less hangovers and spend a lot less money doing it all. For me, this is the best way to enjoy my time away from studies.


I’ve been sort of following a rule here at Cheaplander - I haven’t made too many posts about “homemade” things unless I’ve actually tried it myself. However, I’ve come to realize that this just isn’t the most efficient way to blog. In fact, it’s downright stupid of me. For one thing, there’s tons of Cheaplander-ish things out there to try out, and only 24 hours in the day to try them out.












